Mother's Day

'Tis the day after Mother's Day and all through the house...

No, just kidding. I was going to try and do this post in poem form, but it's too much work, frankly. It was a beautiful Mother's Day here in Colorado yesterday. 80 degrees, light breeze(hey, I'm rhyming after all!), missin' my main squeeze... but I digress. Chase and I went to church, and it was a fantastic service. Left me in tears, and in a good way! Then, we went to lunch at Red Lobster. I was pushing for Italian, but you know how that goes.

THEN, we went home and the real Mother's Day treat began. No, not a spa treatment, no, not even the annual Mother's Day nap...the Mother's Day mowing of the yard. sigh But, it had to be done, and with no husband in sight, and knowing that making Chase do it would be tantamount to doing it myself...I did it. I got the front yard mowed with a minimum of scratches acquired and a minimum of bad words muttered, and then proceeded to the back yard. I thought to myself, "Self, be a responsible mower-owner and check the oil." So, I did. It was low. I added, oh, half a quart. Should be enough, right? I mean, my motto is, you can always add more, so start slow. Yep. It was plenty. In fact, when I proudly started it up again (feeling oh, so responsible, I might add), I was treated to a Mother's Day smoke cloud that probably single-handedly made it an ozone action day in Denver. Apparently, half a quart is a smidge too much. Like maybe 50% too much. Oops. Teach my hubby to leave me to do the yard work, huh?? :)

Luckily, my neighbor saw the cloud, figured I had set myself on fire and came over to put me out. When I told him how "responsible" I had been, he did a good job not laughing RIGHT in my face...He diagnosed my problem, loaned me his lawnmower (but first made me swear I would not add anything to the mower) and I finished the back yard without being reported to Al Gore...at least, not yet.

The question of the day is...what should the Craigslist ad say? "Moving to Las Vegas, no need to mow the gravel, lawnmower $20." OR "Wife forced to mow yard on Mother's Day. Lawnmower free to first person to pick it up before hubby gets home from work." Whaddya think?

Deep thoughts...

Our thoughts have amazing powers, don't they? It's funny, I can be having a perfectly good day, when out of the blue, I'll think to myself... "I didn't play with Chase yesterday. I'm a terrible mother." All of a sudden, my emotions, my feelings and my self-esteem take a HUGE nosedive, and I'm in a deep blue funk. It's not that we spent a rare day in an uncharacteristic rush, it's that I'm a terrible mom. What's up with that? I mean, it's amazing the things we say to ourselves! If someone walked up to me and accused me of being a terrible mother, I would defend myself and give eight million examples of days when I did nothing but play with him. But, when I say it to myself, somehow, it seems true.

I just finished a class at church called Beta. It's a class about faith, about having a closer walk with God, and about life in general. One of the topics they really stress is purifying your mind. You've heard the old "garbage in, garbage out" adage. That was part of it - being careful about what you put into your mind, but a bigger issue was about taking your thoughts captive. That sounded kind of like "church speak" to me, so at first, I dismissed it. But, it's really not church speak; it's very concrete and very effective!!

Basically, it goes like this - a thought, like the bad mom one I described above, enters your mind. What you do is say (out loud works best for me, although it makes those around me wonder about my sanity...), "That's not from God, and it's not true!" Now, you say, how do I presume to know that thought isn't from God? Because God might give you a thought like, "you need to make time to spend playing catch with Chase today. He needs your attention." But God just wouldn't tell you you're a bad mom. Name-calling doesn't seem to be God's style! It's like if your sweet son told you a lie. You would deal with the lie, but you wouldn't call him a LIAR.

It takes practice (and makes people think you're a little loopy), but it really has done wonders for me and my general outlook. It's amazing, when you're paying attention, how many nasty little negative thoughts creep in during the day! I don't mind the little correcting ones, but the name callers? They gotta go.

Ah, the sweet feeling of NOT being sick

Chase woke me up this morning (at 9am!) saying, "Mommy, I feel like I could conquer the world today!" His fever-flushed cheeks are back to normal, his eyes are bright, and he is back to my old Chase. A little less energy than usual, but he is feeling NOT SICK, and that is great. However, we decided that due to the horrific-ness of the weekend, we would take today to completely recover.

So, we have plans to take the dog for a little w-a-l-k (you have to spell it or he gets all excited), eat some homemade chicken soup for lunch (just call me Martha Stewart), then settle down to watch Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. I hope, now that it's been several thousand years since I saw it as a kid, that it is appropriate for my sweet boy to see...I remember the Nazi-face-melting scene being pretty scary, but that's at the end, and I can warn him about that. Other than that, I remember it being pretty much like the "National Treasure" movies - pure fun action, just made for a 10-yr-old boy. I'll let you know if I'm wrong...

In the meantime, it's a Spongebob fest around here. I don't usually wish we had cable, but when Chase is sick, it would sure be easier than renting Spongebob movies. Even when Chase is sick, he doesn't slow down unless you plug him in, so if I need him to be still and quiet all day, the TV is my friend! Tomorrow, it's back to his usual 1-hour of PBS kids programming a day plus Survivor on Thursdays. Oh, yes, and Smackdown. Can't forget Smackdown. If you are not aware of the SD addiciton in my family, see my earlier post (sigh).

Hopefully, the last posting about vomit...

The only thing worse than having the stomach flu is waking up at 1am and realizing you gave it to your 10-yr-old son. My poor Chase has been up every 30 minutes for the past 7 hours being sick. I made a pallet next to his bed, so I was up exactly the same number of times (yawn). It is awful to watch him being sick and knowing I can't do anything to help him. He handled it SO much better than I did, though. After I had been sick for 4 hours, I was in tears most of the rest of the day. Chase has really been a trooper. He has now gone more than an hour without being sick, so hopefully the worst is over.

I'm going to go take a nap now - stay well!!!

Addictions

I have an addiction. It's to a silly computer game called Zuma. My dear brother and his dear wife gave it to Chase for Christmas. I can't seem to stop playing it! :( So, just a second ago, I deleted it from my computer. After I deleted it, I actually looked at the spot where the icon used to be and felt sad...

Addictions are funny things - I know people who are addicted to cigarettes, to chewing tobacco, to caffeine, to chocolate and even to alcohol. It's funny that we humans take things that make us feel good and make them a bad thing, isn't it? There are studies that say that some alcoholics truly are alcoholics from birth; they just haven't taken their first drink yet. Once that first drink is consumed, the switch is flipped, and their life is almost certainly ruined. That's kind of scary to us parents out there who had their first drink as a teenager! I figure chances are slim that Chase will graduate high school without having had an alcoholic drink - I hope he doesn't have that switch...

I would say I'm fairly addicted to chocolate, at least on the short term. Meaning, if it's around, I really can't resist it. I can resist buying it, and can resist (for a day or so) opening an unopened bag of chocolate, but once that seal has been broken, Katie bar the door. Even though it is TERRIBLE for my digestive system...even though I KNOW I will suffer for it later. Even though it causes me to not fit in my size 10 jeans...somehow, it all seems worth it at the time.

So, poll time - what are you addicted to? C'mon, I know my Aunt Cathye, my husband, my mom and my friend Beth read this at least occasionally. Anybody else out there reading my rantings? I'm addicted to Zuma (where's that install disc??) and chocolate. And maybe crime shows on TV... What's your guilty pleasure? :)

Today's entry delayed due to possible death

I have the most dreaded of all illnesses - the stomach flu. I woke up this morning at 4 thinking... "Hmmm, I feel like I might need to throw up." Instead, I decided to ignore it and go back to sleep. At 4:30, I woke up again with the clear message: "We can do this in the bathroom, or we can do this right here, but it's gonna happen in 5..4..3..." At which time I broke several land-speed records making it to the bathroom. I mostly spent the day either crying over the toilet, crying in bed or crying as I crawled between the two. On the bright side, I got to watch all of the soaps today. All of them. Did you know Erica Kane is in jail? I couldn't really figure out why...but she makes those prison clothes look good!

It's funny, there aren't too many times that my mom is AWOL for more than a day or so, but it never fails that I get sick when she is! Last year, I got strep, and Chase had the flu AND strep at the same time. Mom was in New Zealand. Now, I need to cry to my mommy on the phone that I'm throwing up vital organs and she is on some cruise until tomorrow! :( I know she can't actually help me - we live more than a thousand miles away from each other, but it's always nice to call and cry to your mommy when you feel like kaka. So, Mom - if you're reading this, call me when you get home! I still have a tear or two, and I'll gladly shed them in your general direction.

Thankfully, I'm up, wearing real, honest-to-goodness clothing (a first for the day) and feeling about 30% better than two hours ago. I think the worst is over and now I'll just be tired and unable to eat solid food for three days. Which, honestly, compared to the last 13 hours, sounds as good as a week in a spa to me!! Ok, maybe not quite that good, but you know what I mean.

If you don't like the weather in Colorado...wait a second, it'll change

This is a special message to all of my Texas friends. DON'T use that phrase regarding weather in Texas EVER again. That particular phrase was CREATED for Colorado weather. One example (of many):

Monday - Wednesday, April 28-30, 2008 - 75-80 degrees, beautiful sunny days.
Thursday, May 1, 2008 - high of 40 with nearly white-out conditions. To those of you in the warmer climates, that means it's snowing like crazy!!! And, the snow is even sticking to the ground because there's just so dang much of it! I've lived in a number of different locales at this point in my life, and I have just never seen anything like Denver. 70 one day, 20 the next. Blizzard in the morning, sunscreen at 2. Every day (and yes, I do actually mean every single day) in the summer, the sky starts out absolutely crystal-clear. By noon, big black clouds roll in over the mountains and it rains (like crazy) for about 20 minutes. By 1, we're all back at the pool again, with no sign of the tornado that just passed over. Very odd...

I know, I know, nothing makes me happy, huh? I complain about Las Vegas because I will probably melt in the sun, and I complain about Colorado because it snows in May. I'm a malcontent, let's face it. If I keep moving West, maybe someday I'll end up in Hawaii??? :) I'll try not to complain about that.